


"Go back to sleep."

by Wrathofscribbles



Series: 100 ways (to say I love you) [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 00:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17213786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrathofscribbles/pseuds/Wrathofscribbles
Summary: “Bad dreams?”  A drowsy voice right behind her and she spins, caught off guard and off balance and catches her foot on a discarded boot – but Noctis grabs her before she can fall, before she can utter anything more than a gasp of his name.





	"Go back to sleep."

**Author's Note:**

> **Big bold reminder that Final Fantasy XV and all of its content is property of Square Enix.** I just like to play in the sandpit they've created for the fans.
> 
> For an anonymous someone from tumblr!

The magic of Lucian Kings is a different sort of power under her skin, something foreign and bright when she closes her eyes, trails of starlight mapping her veins.

It’s a chaos in her blood and bones, an unexpected thunderclap in the silence, a pounding drumbeat in time to her heart, a connection to all the energy around her and she’s never felt so _alive_.  She is a tiny speck in this massive world but she _burns_ and it shows, it glows, a radiance at her fingertips when she examines them and pulls her bloodline’s magic to them.  Is this why the gods wish to keep their families apart, this mix of healing and hurt, life and death?  Perhaps she’ll consult with Gentiana when the sun is up and daemons don’t linger beyond the Haven’s protection, won’t sceam and shriek and throw themselves against the wards when Lady Shiva’s earthly avatar manifests in all her immortal beauty.

But for now her greatest weakness - her curiosity and the urge to sate it, ever the bane of her brother’s existence and cause for lecture on how to act with the Imperial army stationed at every door and in every shadow.  No tinmen here, however, and so she plants her feet in the middle of the Haven, having shed her borrowed boots and the pair of socks taken from Noctis’s Armiger (“I don’t see how it could possible be gross, Noctis, how long since you last wore them?  And do you have athlete’s foot?  Well then, hand them over!”).  She wiggles her toes on the rock, unnaturally smooth and cool as if the magic buried in its depths has worn away its rough edges over the years, tips her head back to feast her eyes on the endless wash of stars above, so many worlds, so many secrets, and inhales until her lungs are full to bursting with the weighted damp of night.

There, in her feet, the insurmountable might of Titan, steady as a mountain and planted as the roots of the forest ‘round her old home and if she focuses – the knowledge of sunlight and turning herself to its warm caress, taking strength from it, the growth of spring and decay of autumn and shedding all that isn’t needed, bracing for the bitter months and the fight ahead.  The cycle of life and death and life again, the shifting rumble of earthquakes in between.

On her lips, Shiva’s kiss, given to her but not yet Noctis, the creeping cold of death’s breath and all the stories it whispers.  How to sneak and crawl and worm around defences and heat and shutters, burrowing deep into cracks and concrete and flesh and bone, chilling all in its path.  Merciless and brutal, claiming countless lives and yet gentle and beautiful and drawing laughter from the children playing in its blanket and cupping its secrets in their hands.  Such fragile and clueless beings, deaf to the warnings howling in winter winds.

And in her blood!  Ramuh’s blessing, not quite the static of an empty frequency but a crackle that sings to her and lifts her hair from the roots, floats every strand around her face and makes her skin tingle.  It’s a restless, roaming power looking for an outlet, an escape, building and building until it bursts with the boom of thunder and crack of lightning.  It beads water along her arms and on her lashes and she thinks it might be _freedom_.  A storm to lift her up and carry her away if she only raised her arms, a gusting sigh that’d surely rip the tent free and toss it heavenward, scatter its occupants like pieces of an overturned chessboard.

There is more, too, but wreathed in oily darkness, difficult to reach, and the Infernian’s gift is little more than a sputtering candle in her palm.  She thinks something might be dreadfully, terribly wrong there, or perhaps she is simply unversed and untried in the complexities of Noctis’s magic.  She has but dipped her toes in a bottomless sea, swept aside the veil keeping it all hidden and maybe that thrum low in her gut is the key to pulling a warp from the ether –

“Bad dreams?”  A drowsy voice right behind her and she spins, caught off guard and off balance and catches her foot on a discarded boot – but Noctis grabs her before she can fall, before she can utter anything more than a gasp of his name.  He is – _warm_ where she is cold.  Perhaps she should have wrapped up in a blanket, first.

“I was under the impression you could sleep through an Imperial invasion, never mind a missing body from the tent,” she says, pressing a hand to her chest and the racing heart within.  Noctis rubs at his eyes with one hand, chasing the sleep from them as he raises the other in her direction, the air around her heating as he uncurls his fingers, slow and controlled and without a lick of fire to be found.

“I felt you, stirring the magic,” because he is its source and she only borrows it, oh, oh _goodness_.

“I am _so_ sorry. I didn’t think –” but she cuts off on a squeak as he throws an arm over her shoulders and draws her into half a hug, laughter pressed to her temple with the kiss he leaves there.

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s my turn to keep watch anyway.  Go back to sleep, if you can.  We’re still a few hours from sunrise.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive, say hi to Carbuncle for me if you see him.”

“I will,” she says, just as he collapses into one of the chairs and at least he was smart enough to drag his sleeping bag with him to jam his legs into.  Luna ducks back into the tent, reclaims her space on Prompto’s left, the soft whisper of _sweet dreams, Lu_ and the lingering touch of his magic following her into sleep as it slowly, oh so slowly, sinks into her bones.

_Goodnight Noctis._


End file.
